Anyone thinking of writing a letter to Sheldon Whitehouse about the FISA bill should feel free to use this as a template:

Dear Senator Whitehouse,

I have followed your career in the Senate very closely, and want to thank you for the great job you have done representing Rhode Island thus far. Just this week I was very impressed with your questioning of Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey. I was also previously impressed with your probing questions of former Attorney General Gonzales, and your presentation that demonstrated the troubling level of contact between the White House and the Justice Department. It is clear that you have a keen legal mind and understand the difficult issues facing our country. For that I am grateful.

That said, I am extremely disappointed in your "yes" vote in committee for the FISA legislation that would provide retroactive immunity for telecom companies that broke the law at the behest of the Bush administration. One of the most important issues facing the country today is restoring the rule of law after the subversion it has undergone by the Bush Administration. I know you share this concern, and it was one of the issues you campaigned on last year.

Any doubts that Lincoln Chafee is a "real" Republican must have been laid to rest yesterday when he chose to associate his increasingly sleazy campaign with a serial abuser of women, Antonio R. Freitas. It is a measure of how desperate his campaign has become that he is willing to stake his argument for re-election on the word of a man twice convicted of battering women. It is one thing for Freitas, a man with an axe to grind against the prosecutor (Whitehouse) who twice put him behind bars, to spout such nonsense, but for Chafee to associate himself with Freitas' absurd conspiracy theories does a disservice to his office and the people of Rhode Island. But then as Lincoln Chafee so cavalierly said about Freitas yesterday, "nobody's perfect." Perhaps not, but Rhode Island can do better.

In a previous post I asked whether Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) was a liberal, and concluded he is not. In this post I ask, "What kind of legislator is Lincoln Chafee?" Chafee is perceived by some in the pundit class (David Broder, Steve Clemons) as an independent maverick that votes his conscience even when it puts him at odds with the President and his Party. His moderate stands on abortion rights, gay rights and the environment would seem to support that contention. Chafee's supporters say he is a "thoughtful" legislator, while his detractors point out that it is a fine line between "thoughtful" and "indecisive," and an even finer one between "indecisive" and "politically calculating." I want to take a look at the kind of legislator Lincoln Chafee has been through the prism of the Social Security debate, as I believe it serves as a kind of microcosm of his legislative style in general.

The best argument for voting for Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse over incumbent Republican Lincoln Chafee in the Rhode Island Senate race has to do with control of the Senate. In order to stop the Bush agenda we need a Democratic majority in the Senate, and that majority will be impossible should Chafee's seat remain under Republican control. But for many Rhode Islanders (and even to my surprise many kossacks) that argument is not enough. I have heard "Lincoln Chafee is a liberal and so I am, and I vote for the man, not the party," or words to that effect more times than I care to recount. So let's examine Chafee's record to determine just how liberal he is.

The Providence Journal ran a hideously deceptive review of the Path to 9/11. Projo reviewer Bryan Rourke says of PT911, "it's all completely true." Rhode Island and Southeastern MA kossacks should flood the paper with letters to the editor.

The guest poster over at TPM makes the following reaonable point:

...a Democratic Senate with Lieberman in it far surpasses a GOP Senate without Lieberman.

I quite agree that a Democratic majority with Lieberman is better than a minority without him. However, I am not convinced, despite Joe's assurances otherwise, that Lieberman will caucus with the Democrats under any and all circumstances. Didn't he once promise Harry Reid and other Senate leaders that he wouldn't run as an independent in exchange for his support? Joe Lieberman's word is worth dirt.

Did Bush really nominate Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to replace CIA Chief "John" Porter Goss? Really? Did he really nominate the man who oversaw his illegal, warrentless domestic wiretapping of U.S. citizens? I know Bush is evil and an idiot and all, but is he really stupid enough to have done this? Apparently so.

And did he really nominate someone with the last name Hayden, which will only serve to remind the American public of Sterling Hayden's performance as nutso U.S. Air Force General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 masterpiece Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb? Okay, maybe I only think of that because I'm a film nut, but if Gen. Michael Hayden starts talking about "Communist conspiracies to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids," we are in really big trouble folks.

Today, I got an "emergency" request for money from NARAL, and I couldn't help writing them a long response as to why I am choosing not to give them any money at this time.  I encourage other kossacks to write similar letters to help bring NARAL to its senses.

I'm sorry I am not going to give NARAL any money at this time. I fully support a woman's right to choose, but I do not believe that your organization has been an effective advocate for women's rights. In my own state of Rhode Island NARAL has endorsed Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee. Chafee claims to support a woman's right to choose, but he voted to confirm John Roberts and cast a meaningless vote against Samuel Alito after voting in favor of cloture. Chafee explained that he did not believe that Alito's nomination rose to the level of "extraordinary circumstances" that would justify a filibuster. I disagree with Senator Chafee; when women's fundamental rights hang in the balance, the circumstances are by definition "extraordinary." The truth is that Lincoln Chafee claims to be for women's rights, but does not stand up for them when it really counts.

Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) announced this morning that he would vote "no" on Alito. He has not announced how he will vote on cloture, and according to the staffer I spoke to this morning, he has not decided how to vote on cloture.

Please call his office today, and tell Senator Chafee to vote no cloture for Alito's nomination:

United States Senate
141A Russell
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-2921

170 Westminster Street
Suite 1100
Providence, RI 02903
(401) 453-5294

320 Thames Street
Room 272
Newport, RI 02840
(401) 845-0700

Focusing on abortion the exclusion of all other issues will not work. Alito will say just enough about Roe being settled law to mollify moderates (and those who aren't paying attention), all while giving the old "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" to the rabidly anti-abortion crowd by speaking in their code. This strategy was good enough to get Bush elected, it was good enough to get Roberts confirmed, and it will be good enough to get Alito confirmed too if the Democrats don't come up with a new strategy for how to oppose his nomination.

So what should the Dems do? In my opinion Alito's views on Federalism, not abortion, should be the focus of attack. Unlike Roberts, Alito has a long history of decisions from the bench that betray his radical right wing interpretation of the Constitution. His judicial philosophy needs to be exposed for what it is: Alito is in favor of a form of limited government that warms the hearts of John Birch Society members, but would create a country scarcely recognizable as the United States of America were his philosophy to become the law of the land.

I flew into a rage upon reading the New York Times Op-Ed page today.

Ollie Wastberg, former consul general of Sweden to New York City, today made public his nomination of Rudolf Giuliani for the Nobel Peace Prize in the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. First off, it is more than just bad form to make a Nobel nomination public; it is in direct contravention of the Royal Academy's rules, which require strict secrecy.

But it wasn't this procedural faux pas that upset me; it was Wastberg's rationale behind the nomination.  Wastberg singles out for praise the aggressive arresting of turnstile jumpers, and credits the policy with a decrease in muggings and graffiti.  I was a victim of this very policy.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/01/opinion/01wastberg.html?

According to today's Washington Post former Sec. of State Colin Powell offered Republican Senators Lincoln Chafee (RI) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) "a frank assessment of the nominee as a man who was challenging to work with on personnel and policy matters."

Powell noticeably did not sign a letter from seven other former U.S. secretaries of state or defense supporting Bolton. And Powell's former chief of staff Lawerence Wilkerson publicly said Bolton would be an "abysmal ambassador."

I like to think of myself as a nice reasonable guy. I've been trying to deal with this election loss, and I'm having trouble. Today at work I flipped out on a right-wing Evangelical who works outside my office. I've put up quitely with his horrid contemporary Christian music, with all the talk about the homo agenda, the threat of liberals banning the ten commandments, etc., etc. But today I just lost it. I don't even remember half of what I said, but it did involve propositioning a co-worker for gay sex in front of him (I am straight, not that it matters).

What is he up to? According to AFP Bush today is calling for a "quick end" to today's election saying:

"My hope, of course, is this election ends tonight...I think it's very important for it to end tonight. The world watches our great democracy function, and be nothing (would be) better for our system for the election to be conclusively over tonight."  

I don't get the sense this means he will conceed quickly. If you read further down in the story there is the following quote from Karl Rove;

"We will have a war room on the political side and a war room on the legal side. It's already operating at this point."

Translation: Bush/Cheney are moving ahead with plans to challenge the election if they lose, but at the same time calling for a "quick end" if they win.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041102/ts_alt_afp/us_vote_bush&cid=1506 &ncid=1963&sid=96378801

I lived in NYC during this two-bit fascist's reign. Everybody treats him like a god since 9/11, but to me he was, is and forever shall be a jerk.

Today he sank to a new low (which is pretty low for a guy who treated the mother of his children like a common criminal after publicly humiliating her), when he told NBC's Matt Lauer that the troops, not the president should be blamed for the missing explosives. Giuliani said:

"The president was cautious. The president was prudent  ... the actual responsibility was on the troops there. Did they search carefully?" Then, perhaps realizing what a bone-headed statement he had made, Giuliani backtracked and said, "The president was not willing to put blame on the troops."

Apparently the president isn't willing to put the blame on the troops, but he has no problem sending Giuliani out as a surrogate to do so.

Paul Krugman has an excellent op-ed piece on the threat of a draft during a second Bush term.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/19/opinion/19krugman.html

The gist of it is this: four years ago this guy told us we didn't have to worry about his tax cuts increasing the deficit and look what happened. Now  he tells us not to worry about a draft. But just as his fiscal policies increased the national debt, so his military policies are pushing us in the direction of needing a draft.

Kerry and Edwards should pick up this line of attack.

Check out this story by Josh Marshall:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_10.php#003684

In short: Jim Tobin, the New England regional chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign, has been named as a co-conspirator in the 2002 New Hampshire election fraud, phone-jamming case. Two others have already pled guilty to felony charges in this case. Now the Department of Justice has intervened to delay depositions until after the election.

So Bush-Cheney thinks it is okay for them to have a guy under investigation for felony voter fraud as the chair of their regional campaign! I think this is something that voters in New Hampshire and Maine should be made very aware of.